By Jonathan Alexandratos
And the worst part is: it really is a good script. Mamet crafted, circa 1984, a story
that, superficially, is about men who work as real estate agents, selling land
to customers that they basically scam into buying. Under this, though, the play is about the hollowness of male
machismo, and that, though this attitude is obviously destructive to women, it
is just as destructive to men.
Which was a key problem in the 1980s, wasn’t it? Catch phrases like “Greed is Good” and
the glorification of the wealthy, strong, alpha male in Reagan’s America
created an atmosphere where it was essential for a man to *appear,* and not of
much concern for him to *be.* Yet,
men believed (and still believe) that this macho attitude ought to define them
to their core. The reason such men
typically become Venn Diagrams of bad decisions is because the idea that
they’ve held at their very center is, in actuality, void of substance, and
cannot possibly hold the weight of human emotion.
Enter this GLENGARRY production, where director Daniel
Sullivan has decided the story would be better told not through character, but
through caricature. Al Pacino, who
plays the old-timer Shelly Levine in this production (he was the hotshot Ricky
Roma in the 1992 film), needlessly gyrates, mimes actions, and goes
cartoonishly bug-eyed through many of his lines – lines which Jack Lemmon (in
the film version) played with such understated nobility, such restraint, such
genuine *belief.* Shelly Levine is
an imprisoned man. In the play,
Levine (spoiler alert) robs the real estate office in order to steal very
valuable leads which he can then sell.
It is revealed very early on, however, that Levine has an ailing
daughter. The line (in the play –
not so much in the film) is easily missed: at the top of Act I, Levine tries numerous macho tactics to
entice Williamson (his boss) into handing over the more valuable leads, so
Levine can have a shot at making a reasonable amount of money. Only after all else has failed does Levine
mutter, “My daughter—” Here is
Mamet’s strength: Mamet, like his
inspiration Harold Pinter, can make two words say more than most other playwrights’
entire acts. It is, then, no
wonder that, when Mamet sent a draft of this play to Pinter, Pinter, who had
never met Mamet, immediately sent back a reply that read (and I’m
paraphrasing), “Don’t change a word, I’m sending it to the producers.” But when a production decides that
these characters will no longer take their (again, hollow) machismo seriously,
and play off their lines as though they were in the Saturday morning version of
GLENGARRY, their emotional two-worders never land. Thus, the ending, where Levine must (spoiler alert, again,
though if you’re still reading after the first one…) have his Come-to-Jesus
moment and confess to his crime, is void of any emotion and the audience simply
doesn’t care that a once-great old man has essentially committed his version of
suicide on stage.
So why embrace the caricature? Well, this is Broadway, and Broadway ticket sales’ key
demographic is tourists. And, when
so much of a show’s Return on Investment comes from a group that may not be
entirely proficient in the English language, you need to craft a show that will
ensure they have a good time, too.
They, the production, already had the names: Al Pacino, Richard Schiff
(though I don’t know how popular The West
Wing was in Minsk…), John C. McGinley, Bobby Cannavale… Now it’s up to the director to ensure
these actors offer not just lines, but body language, that every paying
customer can get. What’s something
we can all get? Cartoons. Hence, Broadway becomes (and is) not a place
where any real theatre is born (with the exception, I have to add, recently, of
the short-lived Theresa Rebeck piece SEMINAR), but where theatre *appears.*
What’s more: audiences should find this offensive. They should find it as offensive as an
advertisement that claims to know exactly what inspires everyone, or bad genre
fiction that spouts jargon without ever making an attempt to explain the
concepts behind the language (you’ve heard it in bad sci-fi, plenty – usually
in the names of tools like the “quantum” somethingorother or the “flux”
thisorthat, with no time paid to what those words actually mean). It should be offensive because it feeds
audiences the appearance (there’s that word again…) of emotion, or
over-emotion, and essentially asks that they “just trust” that there’s some
real feeling in there somewhere – even though that isn’t evidenced by anything. Much in the same way [insert science
fiction B-movie] calls that spoon-hot-glued-to-a-trashcan-lid a “quantum
capacitor” and demands that you, the viewer, simply understand that there’s
science there (science that you’re not worth being considered smart enough to
understand), this GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS production needs its audience to see a
pelvic thrust and just sort of take its word that that means something
emotional. Or just remember the
movie.
This is surely the largest problem with this new production,
but it isn’t the only one. The
first act of the play features a full blackout (curtain down) after each
scene. The set doesn’t change
(it’s all in the same Chinese food restaurant), only actors go in and out. As the curtain is down, fortune cookie
messages and business maxims are projected onto its darkened velvet, in an
obvious attempt on Sullivan’s behalf to say to the audience, “Hey guys, we know
we’re lowering the curtain here and taking a full blackout for absolutely no
reason but – LOOK!
PROJECTION!” The second
act, though, tosses out this practice and goes for the act-long curtain-up
tactic, which works, but makes one feel like this is an entirely separate play
from the one of the first act. I
think this was probably utilized to make the first act a little longer – it is
quite short, as-is. But the
solution is all wrong. You don’t
need to lengthen the first act, you need to cut the intermission. Of course, getting a Broadway theatre
to cut an intermission would be like getting Liberace to cut the sequins – cut
intermission, and when will the audience buy their ten-dollar bags of
M&Ms? Mamet’s more recent
play, NOVEMBER, had the same intermission problem, and the last thing you want
to do is remind audiences of NOVEMBER.
Do you remember NOVEMBER?
Yeah. Neither does
anybody. I can deal with not stretching my legs
for 80 minutes, Broadway, believe it or not, I can.
Another possible play-lengthening method employed by
Sullivan, here, might be having the actors perform their lines as though they
had just taken some sort of sedative.
The stereotype of Mamet’s language is true: it’s like watching two
expert players play ping pong.
Rapidity is everything. In
Sullivan’s production, the audience gets the opposite: no urgency, and phony
acting. The result is spending two
hours with Al Pacino as he winks his way through a play, all the while going,
“Yeah, but you know I’m Al Pacino, right?
I mean, acting is just my day job.”
Yes the script endures all of this, because the script will
always endure. But with Broadway
being ridiculously pricey, just read the seven-dollar script. Save up for when an all-female company
does the play again (this happened at least once, and raises all sorts of
interesting and meaningful questions).
Save for when the play is put on by a whoop of baboons (this hasn’t
happened, to my knowledge, but, hey, they couldn’t do any worse…) Seeing this production will only remind
you how much you hate the world, and the way it essentially gives you lip
service through popular media, all the while assuring you not to worry, because
someone else has already got the big stuff handled.
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